The End of All Things

So, perhaps I'm being a tad melodramatic.  But I started things with Lord of the Rings, so I should end that way too, right?  I do love circle stories. 

Speaking of circle stories, yesterday I said my goodbyes to Amman, Jordanian style.  A group of friends and I hit all of the major sites in Amman to spend a day together and enjoy the city many of us have been proud to call home for the past four months. Here are the highlights:

We started with the Friday brunch at Books@Cafe on Rainbow Street.  

Then we went to the Citadel, and I climbed on my last roman column...

And left off where I began.  You might remember The Citadel from my Orientation week post. 

Next up: the Roman Amphitheater! 

Then a few mosques: This one is Abu Darwish Mosque

Then we went to the King Abdullah Mosque in Abdali.

Then we ended our night at Hashems for Falafel and Hummous and walked to Habibeh's for kanafeh.

It was a wonderful day. Now, as I write, the sun is setting on what is truly my last day in Jordan.  I will rise early tomorrow to take my last taxi ride to the airport, and then I will be homeward bound.  America bound.   It feels like just yesterday I was writing on the opposite side of the world, getting ready to leave America for Jordan.  It doesn't seem real.  I flip though the many pages of my journals like a stranger - did I really do all of this?  I rode a camel through the Wadi?  Climbed to the Monastery in Petra?  Saw crusader castles and had a week-long vacation in Italy? 

I look back and think of the girl who boarded her first international flight back in January.  She had no idea what the next four months would bring, the friendships and memories those months would forge.  I come back to the United States not only with a considerably stuffed suitcase, but as a changed person.  The girl who stepped onto the plane in January isn't quite the same person getting off of the plane tomorrow. 

Jordan now ends, but something tells me that my travels have just begun.